Much is said about the future of mobility, less about the virtualisation of mobility itself. For Sergio Savaresi, professor at the Politecnico di Milano, this is the most important effect of the pandemic emergency. We have come to realise that we can do many things without moving around, and as a result, within the next 20 years it will be the demand for physical mobility itself that collapses. There will be far fewer cars on the roads, replaced by self-driving shared taxis for people's journeys and by vans, robots and drones for home deliveries. In the meantime, during this decade, we will witness the full establishment of the electric car, which is already more cost-effective than a conventional vehicle. The purchase cost, battery range and lack of charging points are not real obstacles: for Savaresi, they are rather "three prejudices." Here is why.

In Europe and Italy, connected cars are winning ever greater favour among drivers. With self-driving cars, on the other hand, the timescales for widespread adoption still seem very long. What is holding back their development?
Connected cars and self-driving cars present very different and incomparable levels of technical complexity. The former make use of technologies already widely available in a world in which we are hyper-connected, and which moreover do not concern the movement of the vehicle but rather the services offered to whoever is sitting at the wheel. As for self-driving cars, we are currently at level 2: there are already vehicles on the market that allow autopilot to be engaged in certain situations — on the motorway, for example. The great leap is level 3, in which — as happens on aircraft — the driver can afford to be distracted and do other things, because the car signals difficulties in time to allow them to regain control of the vehicle. This is a great leap because it touches not only technological aspects but also regulatory, legislative and insurance ones.

When will we be able to see them in considerable numbers on our roads?
At present, level 3 self-driving cars are not authorised, but I am convinced that if the 2020s will be the decade of the electric car, the 2030s will see the full establishment of autonomous driving. I believe China will get there slightly ahead of other countries, taking a few calculated risks along the way. If we were to replace all human drivers with autopilots today, the latter would already be more efficient in terms of reducing road accidents. It is clear that an accident caused by autonomous driving makes headlines today, in contrast to the thousands of victims linked to conventional driving: it is a paradox similar to the one surrounding vaccines that we are witnessing in these very days.

Meanwhile, electric cars continue to win growing market share. It is generally argued that sale prices, battery range and the lack of charging infrastructure are the three factors limiting even wider uptake.
In reality, these are three prejudices. Let us start with prices: if you consider not only the purchase price but also the costs incurred during use — from energy to insurance, through to road tax — the electric car is already cost-effective. The break-even point, that is, the point at which outgoings are offset by savings, is currently reached between six and seven years, and in future even sooner, as battery prices will fall. As for range, a study of ours showed that 50 per cent of Italian cars travel no more than 300 kilometres in any 24-hour period, on no day of the year: this means that for half of the cars currently on the road, range is not a real problem, only a perceived one. Charging points certainly facilitate the ecological transition, but today 30 per cent of Italians could already switch to electric using only overnight home charging. These three prejudices are destined to disappear as people, using electric cars more and more, come to realise that they are not real limitations.

There is also the issue — perhaps not sufficiently considered — of where the energy powering electric cars comes from…

The electric car is designed to emit no CO2 while in motion. But one must ask how the energy needed to power it is produced, and in Europe enormous differences emerge. In France, with nuclear power, 51 grams of CO2 are emitted per kilowatt-hour; in Estonia, with coal, 1,100 grams — that is, 20 times as much. Italy, at 360 grams, sits in an intermediate position, yet one at which electric is already more cost-effective than petrol and diesel. At present, if emissions are below 500 grams, electric performs better, but in future this figure is set to fall in all countries that, albeit at different speeds, have embarked on the path of energy transition.

What do you think of hydrogen cars? Can they genuinely support the ecological transition of the sector, and in what timeframe?

First of all, it is worth highlighting that hydrogen is not an energy source but merely a carrier: a hydrogen-powered car is still an electric car, the difference being that energy storage is achieved using hydrogen coupled with fuel cells rather than a lithium battery. The great advantage lies in the ability to refuel a vehicle in five minutes, providing a range of 500 kilometres. The disadvantages are inefficiency — because two-thirds of the energy is lost in the conversion from hydrogen to electricity — and the lack of infrastructure, which would have to be built from scratch. Hydrogen represents a valid solution for heavy transport and, within about twenty years, will replace diesel in lorries. However, I am not prepared to swear that it can become a genuine competitor to batteries when it comes to cars.

A study by the Politecnico estimated that, in just 20 years, one tenth of the current vehicle fleet will be sufficient to meet mobility needs. What will replace this enormous number of cars?

To reach that scenario, the autonomous car will have to be fully developed up to level 5, which envisages an autopilot entirely capable of replacing a human driver. At that point, the transition towards shared cars and the robot-taxi model will be very rapid. It will be a world in which almost nobody owns a car; only a small niche of "emotional cars" will remain, conceived not so much as an everyday means of transport but as an indulgence — a bit like certain types of motorcycle today. People will get around by taxi, vehicles that are always present on the roads and low-cost, and it will be a far more efficient model with few cars covering few kilometres because they are shared: today, on average, each Italian car travels only 10,000 kilometres a year.

We've talked a great deal about future prospects, yet among the most visible effects of the pandemic emergency are a return to the private car, a collapse in public transport use, and a certain reluctance to use car-sharing…

These are all effects of an understandable fear of infection. But in a few months we'll put these concerns behind us and go back to moving around more efficiently, using public transport and shared vehicles. Cities are holding up because people are moving around less — just imagine if everyone were travelling at the same pace as a year and a half ago, but only by private vehicle. More than anything, in my view the pandemic has taught us something else.

What?

The pandemic emergency has accelerated the concept of the virtualisation of mobility. We have come to understand that there are technologies allowing us to do many things remotely: think of virtual meetings, which will moreover be enhanced through augmented reality. Or the purchase of goods of virtually every kind, from clothing to groceries. All of this comes at the expense of people's physical mobility; as a result, there will be a reduction in the demand for physical mobility itself, and an increase in logistics mobility. In practice, we will see far fewer cars and far more vans, robots and drones on our roads: it will no longer be us going to where the goods are, but the goods coming to us thanks to e-commerce.